One NPC to bind them

I tend to prefer to make my campaigns about the PCs if possible. As in, make the PCs the focus of the story.

OPs premise can be good if everything's not about her all the time

It's going to be riding a very fine line between Story-Stealing DMPC (too competent and/or the story gets railroaded to go along with her desires, rather than the PC's directions) and Annoying Escort Mission (she's utterly fucking useless and her Pollyanna optimism just rubs salt into it).

Personally, I'm into it, but I tend to prefer rpgs that are focused on characters and their relationships. If your group isn't like that, or you don't know if you're into it, your job is going to be much harder.

>I tend to prefer to make my campaigns about the PCs if possible. As in, make the PCs the focus of the story

Stroking the players ego never ends well.

Hell may hath no fury like a woman scorned.
But even woman scorned hath no fury like woman head over heels in love.

Thanks user, I try.

That doesn't necessarily follow, though.

The story revolving around the players and their actions doesn't mean they always succeed or are treated like an in-setting big deal. it just means you prioritize player agency and build off of their choices and ideas, creating plots from the pieces they give you.

Perhaps the simple quest of the girl sals to something bigger which bigger players and PCs become invested in. What if the girls sweetheart is under a regiment led by someone important?

Maybe introduce her in the end of the second session. She hears of you characters deeds. Asks for Grunt work. Never mentions her motives for going to the war front.

Sounds pretty gay. What's the hook? Why should the players care in the slightest about this NPC? Why would the fate of this young woman's sweetheart matter to them? What's your backup if it doesn't?

Read the thread for all the possible ways this could work out.

Reminds me a little of Samurai Champloo.

Can I make my PC woo her?

>strong willed and independent wymen
Into the trash it goes. All women should be cute maids.

>implying cute maids can't be strong-willed or independent or women

>She actually manages to catch up with her childhood sweetheart
>the war has transformed him from an inoccent boy into a callous and rather cruel soldier who wants nothing to do with her
[Spoiler]He actually does love her, but feels like he's become too much an inhuman killer to make her happy[/spoiler]

well time to consummate their relationship for the first time I guess? Nothing better than a woman's warmth to heal a tortured soul

>Be careful about your monster selection

This. It might be better to keep things relatively friendly with minimal fights to the death. Monsters that run away after getting a good licking and humans that try to talk it out before resorting to violence (and also know when to quit).

As a PC, I would ensure that she 'accidentally' dies in the first serious encounter.

This is why Pathfinder's Jade Regent campaign setting has a backup plan in case the NPC dies, because the writers knew that the PCs would do everything they could to ensure that she died.

That seems like just being contrary for the sake of being contrary and actively trying to sabotage the explicit campaign idea because... reasons, I guess?

This is correct.

The biggest risk with this (adorable) plot hook is that it risks sidelining the players. It risks taking their agency and subordinating it to an NPC. That's bad - it takes away the illusion of free will you need to give players to make them feel like the world is real, and it demands they pay attention to a plot hook they may not really care about.

What you do is you work it in naturally. You don't have her be the middle of the party at the start of the game - you have her show up along the way in unrelated places. Keep her description short but distinctive - give her a piece of clothing easily-identifiable, like a locket.

At every town, the party has an encounter with the locket girl. Eventually, someone will ask what's up with her, and she'll tell them, tearfully, that she's been hitchhiking and hiding in caravans and running from monsters because she's looking for her love.

Now the players have a reason to care - she's mysterious, she's got guts, and she's been a plot hook for long enough to be an organic part of the setting. Same concept, but different introduction. Makes a lot of difference.

I'm slightly interested about the reasons. Can you tell me why?

Because it would feel like we're spear-carriers in some other NPC's fantasy novel.

No-one comes to play an RPG to be a sidekick. Like, the story would read "Red-Headed Girl and the Three Assholes who Helped Her Regain her Kingdom." Why the hell would I want to be lead through a campaign where I'm basically doing all the gruntwork for the REAL hero? The point of playing an RPG is that I can be the hero myself - or at least, the group can be the heroes.

It's like if you played an RPG campaign where you were Sam. Frodo is an NPC, and you have to nursemaid him all the way to Mount Doom.

Ok. But wouldn't it be more productive to discuss this with your GM instead of just killing npc?

8/10, I like this approach

Not that guy, but it'd be more productive if the GM actually worked it into the setting and gave me a reason to care about her than "hey isn't this a great campaign idea?"

I've read DM of the Rings. It's not, no matter how much every GM secretly dreams of a Tolkienesque story arc one day. Keeping players on point for long enough to do an escort quest across half the setting is like herding cats.

This. People gotta communicate.

> if the GM actually worked it into the setting and gave me a reason to care about her than "hey isn't this a great campaign idea?"
>The thread is just talking about a game campaign idea
>Gets upset that they aren't also talking about weaving it into a larger setting/story

wtf dude? Are you just contrarian?

I disagree. It would work much better if the GM and players explicitly agree beforehand that the game will be about escorting this girl, instead of hoping they'd pick her up on a whim during the play. In your scenario there's a distinct possibility of the players ditching her at some point and going their own way when they get bored of her, leaving the GM little choice but to railroad them to helping her again. Also, they will become resentful for holding a second candle to a NPC and start accusing the GM bringing his DMPC waifu into the game.

>Why the hell would I want to be lead through a campaign where I'm basically doing all the gruntwork for the REAL hero
>chick looking for her bf is the hero
>thinks all stories will revolve entirely around the chick

It's a premise, dude. You can do a lot with a premise. It's not the premise's fault you went to the worse possible scenario.

> GM and players explicitly agree beforehand that the game will be about escorting this girl

Or the GM crafts the plot where the party is still the primary focus and uses the backdrop of escorting the NPC as a way to construct encounters, scenarios, and events along the way.

For example, Firefly could be seen as an escort campaign with the doctor and his sister being the NPCs.

> Not that guy, but it'd be more productive if the GM actually worked it into the setting and gave me a reason to care about her than "hey isn't this a great campaign idea?"
Would you help your GM with this? With giving your character a reason to care about her, I mean.

Considering maids were usually working for a wage, meaning they weren't dependent on a husband for sustenance, doesn't that make maids pretty independent?

Where a village girl is supposed to find the means to hire a Kong term adventuring party?

Make this village girl a sub plot. Have her be part of the party's entourage and slowly present her background when they're camping and shit. Also, make the lost husband/boyfriend subplot tie to the main narrative in a meaningful way.

Eh. I dunno. That's not my experience. I've been a player, I've had players, and with my established group we've played all sorts of things that did not have us as the indisputable heroes of the story. Not to mention that I don't even see how this is not being the heroes, but that's besides the point.

It just requires buy-in. If the GM tells me before starting that the campaign is going to be about a big escort quest across the world, I'll make a character that will fit that campaign. Much like if the GM says the next campaign has us as a spec-ops team (we've played this, too), I'm not going to go "well our superiors are the ones deciding where we go this is bullshit I'm going to kill the NPC sergeant".

On that note, by the way, if you don't like the campaign idea, just say so before you start and don't play, don't sabotage the game, fuck's sake. That's just basic politeness.

Well that kind of defeats the purpose though I do agree with the sentiment that the whole game should not revolve around the NPC or you risk the players being "nah my guy go does something that makes more sense for who they are"

This. People got to not be afraid to communicate with the GM.

Agree

I mean, sure, why wouldn't I? I usually write characters who would help a lost girl. I certainly wouldn't stab the character out of spite or anything.

If the GM came to me and said "hey I want to run a game that's like this" I would probably say "OK, but I'm not really interested in playing that," though.

Presentation is everything. Try reading next time.

This is not how players work, or at least not any player I've ever had. Players whose illusion of freedom is shattered have much less fun than players who get to suspend their disbelief and make a choice to engage in-character.

I would feel much more like a second candle if the GM told me "hey the game is about this girl" than I would if the GM told me "hey you guys are gonna be an adventuring company in this setting" and then wove the girl in subtly, in such a way that she became a friendly face I knew well.

Hell, have her sell flowers or something in every town. Every encounter, the party learns a bit more about her. They start caring about her struggle. Then they find her in danger, save her, and ask her what the hell she's doing that's so important that she has to travel in the wilderness.

Right there, the party feels they made a choice to engage with a person, rather than that they got handed a plot anchor.

Firefly is a really good example of this, yeah. Simon and River don't become important until halfway through the first episode. They don't become the escort quest until the second or third, they're just passengers who happen to be there.

True, but they still have to agree on that type of campaign before they start play. For example in Firefly a character would be free to leave the ship, but then the player would need to roll a new PC to hop on board, and the player needs to be informed of this beforehand.

>I was thinking of a campaign idea that revolves around a DMPC
This is a terrible idea OP.

Samefagging myself because I thought of another point that I feel is important:

By having the girl as a separate story in the world, one of many, the party feels like the world is alive. They feel like their actions matter - like what they do isn't the only story, but one of many, parallel stories going on in the same space. It's not true, of course - it's an illusion, and everything is affected by what they do - but that illusion of a living world means that they're more likely to care about other stories when those stories intersect with or become part of theirs.

While you CAN introduce her at the start with a well-communicated discussion, that's only going to keep the players who would already be interested in such a story around. It's much better to have the players choose to become interested in a story through dynamic storytelling.

>illusion of freedom is shattered
I don't see agreeing on theme shattering the illusion of freedom. The GM pitches a type of game he wants to run, like "big damn heroes saving the day" or "gritty mercenary campaign with lots of moral grey", and the players make appropriate characters. Agreeing to play a story about an escort mission is similar choice.

Meanwhile your approach depends on series of big IFs. If they notice her, if they stat caring about her, if they save her and so on. You are either putting a lot of faith on the players happening to be interested in this storyline you're suggesting, or just railroad them to it in which case it's much preferable to just agree to it beforehand.

Oh, I'm absolutely just railroading it. That's the thing you need to understand - you can absolutely get away with railroading if you're convincing enough with the illusions.

Putting a T-Rex on the railroad tracks is stupid, but putting coins along the tracks and covering them with grass ensures the players want to follow them rather than see the tracks for what they are.

If you're shitty about it - if you jam her in their face and go "PAY ATTENTION TO THIS IMPORTANT PERSON" and make her the center of the universe, if you lack any degree of subtlety, or if you simply don't know how to make an NPC stand out a bit - then yeah, the tracks are revealed.

Being a GM is equal parts fishing and being a showman. If you aren't patient enough to dangle the hook and you aren't good enough to make the hook look appealing, then yes, everything is a gamble on "ifs".

Don't get me wrong - I don't disagree that communication is important. I think it's very important that the GM be up front about a lot of things. But I also think you're ignoring the fact that you can tempt people into doing something they wouldn't otherwise be interested in with a little craft and guile, and that an "escort quest" premise has a more limited audience.

>I don't see agreeing on theme shattering the illusion of freedom. The GM pitches a type of game he wants to run, like "big damn heroes saving the day" or "gritty mercenary campaign with lots of moral grey", and the players make appropriate characters. Agreeing to play a story about an escort mission is similar choice.

This.

Pure sandboxes are not for everyone. A lot of campaigns start from an idea, and then is everyone agrees with the idea, characters get made and the game starts.

A big long escort mission is as much of a theme as any. It could have been a quest to destroy a specific macguffin, or the players being part of a specific force fighting a specific enemy (I've actually played something like four campaigns that could be summed up like this), or the players being an A-Team out to prove their innocence for a crime they didn't commit, or whatever the hell.

Not all games are "group of characters fart around doing whatever".

Basically a Terry Pratchett story line (Monstrous regiment)

Just to clarify, the main chara is a competent pubowner/maid that pretends to be a guy to join up to the army so she can go find her brother- who's in the war. She finds other females also pretending to be males to find sweethearts/redemption/revenge etc

You're confusing the illusion of choice and agency with a pure sandbox, and the two are not the same at all.

Agency is the players having control over their fates and the setting. The illusion of choice is presenting the players with options that aren't really options, but FEEL like options - they all go to the same place, but they don't APPARENTLY all go to the same place. If you don't have any of this in even a preformed campaign, then you have a problem.

A pure sandbox is "let's do whatever."

It can be good if done well. It reminds be a bit of an NPC from a game I was in awhile ago.

There was a young man in a village we were passing through who stole some livestock from a farmer and made up a story about bandits so he could "rescue" the livestock. He just wanted the approval to date the farmer's daughter. We ended up getting hired to go fetch the livestock while he was out.

We found him in the forest nearby with the goats and he explained himself. He was ashamed of it, but didn't think there would be another way he could ever get her father's approval. Then the bandits showed up.

I gave him my backup sword to defend himself and told him to stay out of the fight, instead he charged right in after us. He couldn't really do much, but he did hold off one bandit for a round until we could get to him.

When we got back to the village, we returned the livestock, corroborated his story that he helped us fight the bandits, even if he was getting in over his head. I vouched that he was a good kid, just a little reckless, but that's how they are at that age, right? I let him keep my sword and our paladin gave him a training manual and a long-winded lecture.

Latter on, he helped us rescue the townsfolk, including his girl, from some slavers who passed through the village while he was out guarding a caravan. He was a low level npc at that point, but could actually hit back and tie up a few enemies while we dealt with it. It was nice to see how he had progressed.

Much more recently we got a wedding invitation.

That's when you discover he married someone else because his pool of potential partners grew after gaining a few levels, right?

Why should a level 5 fighter *ever* settle for the farm-girl when he could get a merchant's daughter?

I just don't see the point of jumping through the hoops instead of getting what you want from the get-go is all. I mean, the players won't make their characters in a void since you've already pitched an idea to them what the game will be about. Why be coy about it?

The point is that it makes stories like happen. It's not about being coy - it's about getting players invested emotionally so they care about the fate of the NPC as more than a plot coupon.

Agreeing beforehand that "this game will be about helping a kid" does not prevent them becoming emotionally invested in NPC.

True on both accounts, but I think I can see what is getting at. This kid wasn't central to the plot and we didn't know anything about it in advance. He was just some lovelorn kid in a podunk town we could identify a bit with because, hey, who hasn't done something stupid to be accepted, especially when a girl is involved? I think it's better to let it evolve naturally than setting out the whole story revolving around this investment. Chickens before hatching and that counting thereof.

It's much harder. It's not impossible! But it's much harder.

Because he fucking loves her?

Real people don't always *beep-boop* MAXIMIZE PARTNER POOL POTENTIAL because real people have emotions and form connections and fall stupid in love.

Of course, but in this particular instance the GM is planning a game about escorting a NPC, as described in the OP. It's not going to be about whatever the players happen to be interested in, it's going to be about this one particular NPC all along.

>the player needs to be informed of this beforehand

I would be shocked if a player would be so offended by this campaign prospect that they would not play.

It is? I've never seen that. If anything, most of my groups fall much sooner in love with the NPCs that are with us since the beginning due to campaign concept. Most of the players in my last played campaign, myself included, would have jumped on a grenade for the NPC sergeant in charge of our unit. He was there since day one, and we knew he was the vehicle the GM used to relay the next session's objectives to us, but everyone loved the guy.

No it's not, rpgs are 99% about presentation. A good GM can present the NPC in such a way that they don't feel like a plot ticket, but feels appealing to the players. As you said yourself being GM is a showman, you just gotta be good enough about it.

Depends on what kind of person the Fighter is, doesn't it?

Right, what I'm saying is I don't think OP can reliably count on the players getting invested in this NPC, but he's basing the whole game around it. How many stories do we have about player's going completely off the rails from what was planned? Pic related.

>I don't think OP can reliably count on the players getting invested in this NPC
...which is why getting the players to agree beforehand on the basic concept behind the game is a very good idea.

>Implying you can't have multiple true loves
>Implying he doesn't love the new girl just as much as the old

The fighter is not a snot-nosed punk from the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere anymore, he's got options and he really should consider them rather than limit himself to the yokel he fancied before he became something.

That's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.

Of course it is, I'm saying the fighter is growing as a person and will inevitably come into contact with people quite different from the folks he knew back in the dinky little village, people he might find fascinating or even desirable.

This sort of thing happens all the time in the real world, when your options grow from "every girl in my 100 population town" to "every girl in the county" you tend to find other faces competing with the one you knew since childhood.

This is especially true in medieval settings, where people typically lived and died 10 miles from where they were born with very little in the way of travel.

how is that related to OP's question of how to get PCs escort a NPC?

>This sort of thing happens all the time in the real world
>Therefore it must happen with this specific character

Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.

Honestly, a high-level character meets an insane number of attractive women. Elves, demonic princesses offering their favors, celestials who want to know what this 'kissing' thing is about, and so on.

At some point, you just have to accept that you've grown far, far beyond your small podunk village. When it turns out that the princess of the realm wants to marry you for saving her, and you're carrying a sword with the essence of an ancient warrior's soulmate (of which you're the reincarnation of) it only makes sense to pick another girl.

Exalted exemplifies this best. The moment a PC exalts as a Solar, he has a Lunar mate somewhere in the world. He has transcended humanity at this point, and is never quite the same person he was before.

Like, if you come back home as a high-level Fighter or Wizard, you're basically a god now.

Pic is very, very much related.

Source?

>No-one comes to play an RPG to be a sidekick.
I have, more than once. Not everyone is you.

This.

Although the most extreme example I have seen is, "we can't save the entire 40k universe? This is bullshit, I go to Terra and bombard the palace!"

That's why she's looking for him: she's his maid, and he left without taking his afternoon tea. She carries the teapot with her as the party adventures, and is determined to deliver it to him at all costs.

She can make one pot of tea each short rest. If she's threatened in combat, she can use an action to splash boiling water on an enemy, dealing 1d6 damage and blinding the enemy for 1d4 turns.

But that's not Monstrous Regiment at all. OP didn't mention the NPC joining the army or anything, and it was stories like those that Monstrous Regiment was spoofing in the first place. So it has nothing to do with that at all aside from somebody looking for their love, which is vague enough to be true of any number of plots.

exhentai.org/g/748871/26d1580ac1/

not with my group, she'd wind up a prostitute to the cleric at best. and we'll leave it at that.

You this faithful chaste young woman can be seduced?

>Her love transcends even death. She starts looking into resurrection and necromancy. She will have her love.
SOmeone post the elf story?

This one?

unless i flat out dm says no? then yes she will.

or he'll just sell her off to someone to get raped. I've seen that one too.

>It's like if you played an RPG campaign where you were Sam. Frodo is an NPC, and you have to nursemaid him all the way to Mount Doom.

Depending on the GM, that could actually work fairly well. The reason escort missions in video games are awful isn't inherent in the system, it's the fact that it's hard to program an AI that doesn't feel like a lemming running off into the zombie horde or a stubborn mule that just wants to stand around and get wailed on by all those ogres.

Assuming she actually was reasonably helpful without wholly eradicating everything she came across, an escort mission with a legitimately cute NPC could easily be kind of fun.

Not everybody needs to be the main character user. Some of us are down with Watson.

>This sort of thing happens in other systems as well as the real world
>Therefore it must happen with this specific character

Set it in the Witcherverse.

The girl's Sweetheart was drafted into the War with Nilfgaard. Your quest takes you across corpse-strewn battlefields where you must protect the girl from necrophages and beasts. She's a trained medic so she's actually quite useful.

It turns out the girl's Sweetheart was mortally wounded in a battle when the Nilfgaardians outflanked them. He lay on the field until after nightfall, futilely trying to hold his guts in as he died a slow, horrible death of blood loss and shock.[/spoilers]

Inevitably, Ghouls and Rotfiends came to feast on the fresh carrion. The lad's fate seemed sealed, when suddenly the corpse-eaters turned and fled. A new shape appeared in the mist. A Nosferat, a Vampire.

Impressed by his determination in the face of insurmountable odds, the Vampire turns the lad. Making him a grotesque undead as well.

You can see where this ties into OP's post.

He's level 1 in that NPC not-even-fighter class, what are you even going on about?

Can I play Witcher 3 without playing 1 or 2? Or will I be missing out on too much?

You can play Witcher 3 without 1 and 2. The game starts with a long narration that will help catch you up to speed ( and tell the game what plot choices you made or would like to have made in 1 & 2)

I would recommend at least playing 2, but you don't have to.

how can the girl exist in Witcher setting? She's a virgin.

>A virgin
>around Geralt

Not for long, she's not.

That's what he's saying.

Is Geralt the kind of man to cuck a young man?

come here little girl